A member of the Chinese Communist Party since his youth, Deng Xiaoping has
rendered outstanding service to the Chinese people, throughout the revolution,
during the development of the People's Republic and especially in recent years
when, after the disastrous "cultural revolution", he succeeded in setting the
country on the road to socialist modernization. he has proved to be far-sighted
and persevering, a man of quick understanding and decisive action. the
contribution he has made to the revolution, his courage as an innovator have
earned his the trust of the Chinese people.

In his long career as a revolutionary Deng Xiaoping has enjoyed many
victories and has also been through severe tests. On more than one occasion he
was subjected to unjust attack simply because he refused to abandon correct
views. this, however, only increase the respect in which he was h3eld, and
ultimately he became the nation's chief policy-maker. the collective leadership
which he now head has ushered China into a new historical period.

CHILDHOOD

At he turn of the century the Chinese nation was groaning in misery. Under
the leadership of Dr.Sun yat-sen a resolution was brewing, and the country was
on the eve of radical changes, It was in this turbulent time that Deng Xiaoping
was born.

Deng's birthplace was Paifang Village in Xiexing township, Guang'an County,
in the province of Sichuan. His childhood home was a traditional compound with
one-storied housed surrounding a courtyard on three sides. It was in these
tree-shaded, tile-roofed buildings that his forefathers had lived for three
generations and that Deng Xixian - the future Deng Xiaoping - was born on August
22,1904.

his father, Deng Wenming, had studied at the Chengdu School of Law and
Political Science during the last Xiaoping's mother, Dan by her family name,
died early, leaving behind the eldest son Deng Xiaoping, his three younger
brothers, an elder sister and two younger sisters.

At five the boy entered and old-fashioned private pre-school, at seven a
modern primary school and in due course a middle school in his native county. It
happened that in 1919, on the proposal of Wu Yezhang, a member of the Chongqing
to prepare young people to go to France on a work-study program. After passing
the entrance examinations, the boy was enrolled in the school.

In his teens Deng Xiaoping already had some simple patriotic ideas. After the
may 4th Movement of 1919, he joined his schoolmate in a boycott of Japanese
goods. But his understanding did not go beyond the slogan"save the country by
industrialization", an idea popular among students at the time. his ardent hope
was to go to France to learn industrial skills through work and study for the
benefit of the country.

STUDY ABROAD

In the summer of 1920, Deng Xiaoping graduated from the Chongqing Preparatory
School, filled with fervent hopes, he and 80 schoolmates boarded a ship for
France (traveling steerage) and in October arrived in Marseilles. Deng, the
youngest of all the Chinese students, had just turned 16.

Things did not turn our as he had hoped. He found that he had to spend most
of his time working, and at the most unskilled jobs. Two months after his
arrival he began to do odd jobs at the Le Creusot Iron and Steel plant in
central France. Later he worked as a fitter in the Renault factory in the Paris
suburb of Billancourt, as a fireman on locomotive and as a kitchen helper in
restaurants. He barely earned enough to survive. He attended middle schools
briefly in Bayeux and Chatillon.

It was shortly after the end of World War I, and the European countries had
not yet recovered from the devastation. In France job-hunting was especially
difficult because of the depressed economy. Even those Chinese students who were
fortune enough to find jobs in big factories were paid only half the wages of
the ordinary French workers. Worse still, at this time Deng Xiaoping's family
could no longer afford to send him money, so he had to scrape along on his own.
His high hopes of studying abroad were crushed by the grim reality.

But new ideas were taking strong hold of the young man. thanks to the October
Revolution in Russia, the workers' movement in France was gaining momentum, and
Marxism and other schools of socialist thought were winning more and more
adherents. A number of ideologically advanced Chinese students were starting to
accept Marxism and take the revolutionary road. Under the influence of his
seniors, Zhao Shiyan, Zhou Enlai and others, Deng began to study Marxism and do
political propaganda work. In1992 he joined the Communist Party of Chinese Youth
in Europe (later the name was changed to the Chinese Socialist Youth League in
Europe). In the second half of 1924 he joined the Chinese Communist Party and
became one of the leading members of the General Branch of the Youth League in
Europe. When he worked in Lyons the following year, the Party organization
appointed him special representative to the Lyons Area Party Branch, where he
directed the Party and League work as well as the Chinese workers' movement.

During the five years he spent in France, from age 16 to 21, Deng Xiaoping
was transformed from a patriotic youth into a Marxist. It was the beginning of
his revolutionary career. The Chinese Socialist Youth League in Europe published
a mimeographed magazine, the Red Light, designed to help the Chinese comrades in
France, Belgium and Germany to study theory. Deng not only co-edited and wrote
articles for the journal but also cut stencils and did the mimeographing.

At about this time groups of Chinese Communist Party and Youth League members
in Europe were going to the Soviet Union to study. In early 1926 Deng Xiaoping
left France for Moscow. At first he entered the Communist University of the
Toilers of the East, but shortly afterwards he transferred to the Sun yat-sen
University. Named after the pioneer if the Chinese revolution, this university
was intended to train personnel for the revolution. In China, meanwhile, a
united front had been formed between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
Inspired by Dr. Sun's policy of alliance with Russia, co-operation with the
Communist Party and assistance to peasants and workers, large numbers of Chinese
young people with lofty ideals were arriving at the university to study. Today,
Deng Xiaoping still remembers the two youngest students in his class - Feng
Funeng, the eldest daughter of Feng Yuxiang, and Jiang Jingguo (Chiang
Chingkuo), the eldest son of Chiang Kai-shek.

Deng spent a year at the Sun Yat-sen University, reading books and studying
the basic theories of Marxism-Leninism. At this time Feng Yuexiang ,commander of
the National Army in northwest China, arrived in the Soviet Union. He was
preparing to join in the national revolution in China, so he asked the Communist
International to send a number of its Chinese comrades to work in his army. Deng
was one of the score of people selected. Traversing the deserts of Mongolia, he
arrived in his homeland in the spring of 1927.

After six ears abroad, Deng Xiaoping was no longer the naive young man he had
been before he left China. He was now a staunch revolutionary with a basic
understanding of Marxism-Leninism and some experience of practical struggle.

THE EARLY YEARS AFTER THE RETURN

Deng returned on the eve of the breakdown of co-operation between the
Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and the political situation was unstable. It
was under these circumstances that in March 1927 he accepted the Party's
assignment to go to Xi'an and work at the Sun-Yat-sen Military and political
Academy. This was the first place where he carried out revolutionary activities
in China. The Academy was officially under the general headquarters of Feng
Yuxiang's National United Army; actually, however, it had been established by
Liu Bojian and several other Communists. Deng Xiaoping served as Chief of the
Political Section. political instructor and Secretary of the Communist Party
organization in the Academy. The Academy trained a number of political aware
junior officers as well as Party and political cadred. It sent some of its
graduated to the Political cadres. It sent some of its graduated to the
Political Security Corps of the Shaanxi Command of the National United Army,
thus gradually building a Communist-led corps of revolutionaries within the army
and laying the foundation for the communist-led uprising that took place in
Weinan and Huaxian in Shaanxi in April and May 1928. Some future generals of the
Northern Shaanxi Red Army were also graduated of the Academy.

In April 1927 an abrupt change occurred in China's political situation. In
June Feng Yexiang ordered all the Communists in his army to assemble in Kaifeng
in neighboring Henan Province to receive "training". Actually, this was only a
pretext to get rid of them. Acting on Party instructions. Deng Xiaoping left
Xi'an for Hankou in Hubei Province, where the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist party was located.

In Hankou he worked as a secretary for the central Committee. In the
meantime, the political situation continued to deteriorate. Before long the
Kuomintang government in Wuhan was openly attacking the Communist party. A grim
reign of White terror descended on the country, forcing the Communist Party
underground. It was at this time that Deng Xixian changed his name to Deng
Xiaoping. On August 7 the Central Committee held an emergency meeting as a
non-voting delegate. After the Central Committee secretly moved to Shanghai, the
23-year-old Deng was appointed chief secretary of the Central Committee, in
charge of the general headquarters' documents, confidential work, communications
and financial affairs. In June 1928, when the Party held its Sixth Congress in
Moscow, he stayed behind to help Li Weihan and Ren Bishi, who had been left in
charge of day-to-day affairs at headquarters.

BUILDING THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH ARMIES OF THE RED ARMY

After Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei staged successive
counter-revolutionary soups, the once-dynamic Great Revolution ended in failure.
To save the revolution, the Communist Party launched a series of armed uprisings
against the reactionary Kuomintang regime. In the summer of 1929 Li Mingrui and
Yu Zuobo, who had just taken control of military and political power in Guangxi
to direct the work of the local Party organizations and prepare for an armed
uprising. This was the first time that Deng was independently undertaking the
important responsibility of leading a region.

In Nanning Deng Xiaoping made contact with Yu Zuobo and Li Minrui under the
alias of Deng Bin and began building revolutionary forces. In October Yu and
Li's campaign against Chiang was defeated. Deng and Zhang Yunyi pulled the three
Communist-controlled detachments out Nanning and led them to the Zuojiang and
Youjiang areas. By the end of the month Deng was appointed Secretary of the
Guangxi Front-line Committee of the Chinese Community Party.In December,
together with Zhang Yunyi and Wei Baqun, he launched the Bose Uprising, founding
the Youjiang Soviet Government and the Seventh Army of the Chinese Workers' and
Peasants' Red Army and Secretary of its Front-line Committee. In February of the
following year, along with Li Mingrui and Yu Zuoyu, he launched the Longzhou
Uprising , creating the Zuojiang Soviet Government and the Eighth Army and
serving as its Political Commissar. In the same month Deng returned secretly to
Shanghai to report to the Central Committee. The Committee officially appointed
Li Mingrui General Commander of both the Seventh and Eighth Armies and Deng
Xiaoping their Political Commissar. In the Youjiang area they mobilized the
masses to expropriate local tyrants, distribute land, carry out agrarian
revolution and establish revolutionary governments at various levels. As a
result, the local Red Army forces were expended to cover some 29 countries with
a population totaling more than one million. thus the Youjiang area became one
of the largest revolutionary bases.

At this time, however, the leaders of the Central Committee made some "Left"
errors. In October 1930 a representative of the Committee came to Guangxi to
push the Li Lisan line, asserting that a nationwide revolutionary high tide had
set in. He accordingly ordered the Seventh Army (with which the Eighth Army had
already been merged, after suffering military setbacks) to leave the base area
immediately and to fight its way to Liuzhou, Guiling and Guangzhou. Deng
Xiaoping doubted the possibility of taking these cities and expressed his
disagreement. nevertheless, most of his comrades maintained that they should
obey the representative's instructions, and Deng was therefore obliged to act
accordingly. Eventually, owing to repeated defeats and heavy losses, the Army
had to give up the plan of attacking the big cities.

After the representative of the Central Committee left, the Army, now reduced
to less than ,000 men, was reorganized. The Front-line Committee decided to move
the troops to Jiangxi Province to join the Red Army forces in the Central
Revolutionary Base Area there. After the Seventh Army took the seat of Chongyi
County in Jiangxi in February 1931, the Front-line Committee sent Deng to
Shanghai to report to the Central Committee. In Shanghai he wrote a report in
which he described in detail how things stood in the Seventh Army and analyzed
the lessons they had learned from their uprisings.

BEFORE AND AFTER THE LONG MARCH

In the summer of 1931, with the approval of the Central Committee, Deng
Xiaoping went to the Central revolutionary Base Area in southern Jiangxi and
western Fujian, Fierce fighting was still going on there, as the Red Army was
trying on smash Chiang Kai-shek's third "encirclement and suppression" campaign.

Before long Deng assumed the post of Party Committee Secretary of Ruijin
County, which was adjacent to the Central Revolutionary Base Area. The first
thing he did was to rehabilitate the cadres and ordinary people who had
previously been wronged and called a Soviet congress to discuss the work of the
county, thus arousing the people's enthusiasm and vastly improving the
situation. In the winter of 1932 he was appointed Secretary of the Party
Committee of Huichang, a key county, and began directing the work in the three
countries of Huichang, Xunwu and Anyuan. Six months later he was transferred to
the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee as Director of its Propaganda Department.

Just at this point, the provisional central leadership, which had been
following the line of "Left" adventuresome, moved its headquarters from Shanghai
to the Central Revolutionary Base Area. Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zetan, Xie Weijun and
Gu Bo, following the correct line represented by Ma Zedong, had all along been
acting in accordance with the actual circumstances. They opposed the theory of
"making cities the centre of the Chinese revolution" and advocated building
strength in the vast rural areas, where the enemy's forces were relatively weak.
They rejected military adventuresome in favor of luring the enemy in deep. They
were against expanding the Red Army's main forces at the expense of local armed
forces and urged that both be expanded simultaneously. They opposed the "Left"
land-distribution policy which would have left former middle and rich peasants
destitute. In view of these disagreements, the provisional central leadership
waged a struggle against them. Deng was removed from the post of Director of the
Propaganda Department of the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee and given the
most serious warning. Soon he was sent to the nancun District Party Committee in
outlying Le'an County to work as an ordinary inspector.

However, Wang Jiaxiang, Director of the General Political Department of the
Red Army, and Luo Ronghuan, Director of the Organization Division, knew Deng
Xiaoping well. They sent him to the General Political Department to serve as its
secretary-general. Soon afterwards he was assigned to work in the Propaganda
Division of the Department, where he was made editor-in-chief of the official
organ Red Star. This journal, which offered both news and articles on a variety
of subjects, never ceased publication throughout the war years. It was hailed as
the "Red Army's instructor on Party work"

In October 1934, because of the failure of the fifth campaign against
"encirclement and suppression", the Central Red Army was forced to begin the
Long March. Deng Xiaoping took the post of chief secretary of the Central
Committee for the second tine and attended the Zunyi Meeting, and event that
marked a turning point in the history of the Party. After the First and the
Fourth Front Armies of the Red Army joined forces, he became Chief of the
Propaganda Division of the First Army Group's Political department. After
arriving in northern Shaanxi, he took part in the Red Army's Eastern Expedition
to neighbouring Shanxi Province. After the conclusion of the expedition he
became Deputy and then Director of the War of Resistance Against Japanese
Aggression.

ON THE BATTLEFIELD DURING THE WAR OF RESISTANCE AGAINST JAPANESE AGGRESSION

In 1937 the Japanese imperialists launched a full-scale war of aggression
against China. In the interest of the whole nation, the Chinese Communist Party
worked hard to bring about a second period of co-operation with the Kuomingtang,
thus achieving nationwide unity in resistance. In accordance with the agreement
between the two sides, the Chinese Workers' and Peasant' Red Army was
reorganized as the Eighth Route Army of the national Revolutionary Army and
marched to the front. Deng Xiaoping was appointed Deputy Director of the
Political Department of the eighth Route Army and, shortly afterwards, Political
Commissar of its 129th Division, of which Liu Bocheng was commander.

The 129th Division drove deep into the rear of the Japanese-occupied areas,
established itself in the Tailing Mountains and spread out towards the plains.
Bordering on the three provinces of Shanxi, Hefei and Henan, this mountain
range, known in ancient times as " the ridge of the earth", had long been a
strategic region contested by rival armies in north China. high and perilous, it
was easy to defend but difficult to attack.After consolidating their positions
in the Tailing Mountains, Deng Xiaoping and Liu Bocheng divided their troops
into small detachments to mobilize the masses, organize anti-Japanese armed
forces and set up local democratic governments. Having established an
anti-Japanese base in the Shanxi-Hebei-Henan border area, they led their troops
east across the Beiping-hankou Railway into the southern Hebei plains, where
they established the Southern Hebei Anti-Japanese Base Area. At the same time
they set up the Taiyue and Hebei-Shangdong-Henan base areas.

When the war entered a stalemate, changes took place within the anti-Japanese
camp. Some diehard reactionaries in the Kuomintang began to create friction
behind enemy lines, attacking Eighth Route Army encampments and killing officers
and men. The Eighth Route Army was this placed in the dangerous position of
being caught between two fires. In December 1939 the Kuomintang diehards
launched the first anti-Communist onslaught: the troops under Zhu Huaibing,
commander of the Kuomintang's 97th Army, mounted large-scale offensive against
the Taihang Mountain region where the General headquarters of the Eighth Route
Army and the 129th division were located. In March 1940, driven beyond the
limits of forbearance, liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping ordered their troops to
rise in counter-attack, and in four days of fighting and with co-ordinated
efforts of the troops from the Shanxi-Qahar-Hebei Military Command, they wiped
out Zhu huaibing's whole army and a number of miscellaneous troops. or a total
of 10,000 men. the defeat of this Kuomintang onslaught enabled the Eighth Route
Army to concentrate on fighting the Japanese aggressors and building up its base
areas in the enemy's rear. Beginning in August 1940, liu and Deng, with 38
regiments under their command ( not including local forces), participated in
the" Hundred- Regiment Campaign". fighting 529 operations, big and small, they
dealt heavy blows to the Japanese and puppet troops and greatly strengthened the
whole nation's confidence in victory.

In 1941 the war of resistance behind enemy lines in north China entered the
most difficult stage, when the Japanese troops concentrated their attacks on the
rear. They launched a campaign to "tighten public security" there, adopted a
"burn all, kill all, loot all" policy and built a network of blockhouses to
encircle the army and people of the base areas. For several years on end the
enemy's incessant "mopping-up" operations, together with natural calamities,
placed the base areas in an extremely difficult position. In September 1942, in
addition to his post of Political Commissar of the 129th Division, Deng was
appointed Secretary of the Taihang sub-Bureau of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party. In October 1943, when Peng dehuai, Acting Secretary of the
Northern Bureau of the Central Committee, and liu Bocheng returned to Yan'an to
tale part in the Party's rectification movements, Deng replaced Peng as Acting
Secretary. In that capacity he was in charge of the work of the General
Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army and bore responsibility for leading the
struggle of the army and people in the base areas behind enemy lines. employing
the tactic of advancing when the enemy advanced, he launched guerrilla
operations against the enemy-occupied areas and especially against communication
lines. Under his command the army smashed a series of ruthless "mopping-up"
operations by the Japanese and puppet troops. He led the army and the people of
the whole region in successful efforts to build up Party organizations, armed
units and local governments, to conduct a Party rectification movement, to
secure fewer and better troops and simpler administration, to reduce rents and
interest rates and to launch a large-scale production campaign.

With intimate knowledge of the actual conditions, Deng Xiaoping wrote many
articles and speeches full of original ideas, demonstrating his ability as a
strategist to grasp the overall situation and tackle complex problems. He put
forward a series of specific policies and tactics for struggle against the enemy
and enunciated the far-sighted principle of accumulating strength by all
possible means to prepare for a strategic counter-offensive and for
reconstruction after the war. A a meeting held by the Party School of the
Northern Bureau of the Central Committee to mobilize party members for the
rectification movement, he delivered a speech in which he gave a high evaluation
to the Party's leader Mao Zedong, systematically explained Mao Zedong Thought -
Marxism-Leninism as applied to conditions in China-and declared that the Party
should take it as a guide.

During the anti-Japanese war Deng returned to Yan'an briefly on three
occasions: in September 1938 to attend the Enlarged Sixth Plenary Session of the
Sixth Central Committee; in July 1939 to attend the enlarged meeting of the
Political ?Bureau of the Central Committee and to marry Zhuo Lin (a
revolutionary comrade working there) in August; and in June 1945 to attend the
First Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee, to which he had just
been elected.

For 13 long years of war Deng Xiaoping and Liu Bocheng worked in close
co-operation, and the two became fast friends. Later, Deng Xiaoping said:"People
used to say that Liu and Deng were inseparable, and we did feel inseparable in
our hearts. It was always a great pleasure for me to work and fight alongside
Bocheng."

THE DECISIVE YEARS

After the surrender of Japan in August 1945, the Kuomintang reactionaries, in
defiance of the strong desire of the entire nation for peace and reconstruction,
launched a large-scale civil war with the intention of eliminating the Communist
Party and the revolutionary forces under its leadership. Under the command of
Mao Zedong, the army and the people in the liberated areas rose in resistance.
This was the War of Liberation, a war of decisive importance in the history of
China's democratic revolution.

Before launching all-out civil war, Chiang Kai-shek engaged in peace
negotiations with the Communist Party, While at the same time stepping up war
preparations and provoking incessant local fighting. At that time Deng Xiaoping
was Secretary of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Bureau of the Central Committee
and concurrently Political Commissar of the Shanxi-Hebei-shandong-Henan Military
Command, of which Liu Bocheng was commander. Located in the central plains and
crossed by the Beiping-Hankou, Tianjin-Pukou and Datong-Puzhou railways, the
Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Liberated Area was of great strategic importance, as
it blocked the Kuomintang troops' advance towards the liberated areas of north
and northeast China. Accordingly, this area became the Kuomintang's first
target.

In September 1945 Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping directed the famous Battle of
Shangdang, in the changzhi area in southeastern Shanxi. In this battle their
troops defeated all the 13 divisions of Yan Xishan's army, numbering more than
35,000, which had intruded into the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Liberated Area.
Having thus consolidated their rear, they immediately marched east to intercept
the Kuomintang troops that were advancing north along the Beiping-Hankou
railway. At the Battle of Handan they routed two enemy armies and won over
another, putting out of action a total of more than 40,000 Kuomintang army's
attack on the liberated areas, greatly strengthened the position of the
Communist Party in the negotiations in Chongqing and played an important part in
hastening a cease-fire agreement.

In June 1946 the Kuomintang tore up the cease-fire agreement and launched
all-out civil war. The main force of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Field Army
commanded by Liu and Deng engaged in mobile warfare on both sides of the Longhai
Railway. Advancing and withdrawing over great distances, they fought nine big
engagements in quick succession, at Longhai, Dingtao, Juye and other places,
annihilating large numbers of Kuomintang effective.

The situation was still grave when the War of Liberation entered its second
year. The Kuomintang army, though greatly weakened, was still nearly twice as
large as the People's Liberation Army and vastly superior in arms and equipment.
In an attempt to take the war deep into the liberated areas, it was making heavy
attacks on key points in Shandong and northern Shaanxi. In light of the new
overall situation, the Communist Party led by Mao Zedong decided to pass
immediately from strategic defense to strategic offense, without waiting to have
smashed the enemy attack and gained superiority over the Kuomintang. Focusing
its attack on the Central Plains, where the enemy was weak, and shifting to
exterior-line operations, the PAL would thrust directly to the enemy's rear,
hoping to bring about a strategic change in the war situation.

According to the Central Committee's plan, it was the main force of the
Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Field Army under the command of Liu Bocheng and Deng
Xiaoping that was to carry out this crucial mission. At the end of June 1947, in
a surprise move, Liu and Deng, with an army of 120,000, crossed the dangerous
Huanghe (Yellow River) and entered southwestern Shandong. In 28 days of
continuous fighting they routed 56,000 enemy troops, thus clearing the way for
their march south. They decided that instead of leaving contingents behind to
secure each city they took, they would press forward by forced marches. In
20-odd days, despite blocking and pursuit by hundreds of thousands of enemy
troops, they crossed the Longhai railway and covered a distance of 500
kilometers, traversing the marshy 15-kilometer floodplain of the Huanghe, wading
the Shahe, Ruhe and Huaihe rivers and finally reaching the Dabie Mountains on
the borders of Hubei, Henan and Anhui provinces.

From their position in the Dabie Mountains north of the Changjiang (Yangtze
River), the enemy under Liu and Deng posed a direct threat to the vast
Kuomintang areas south of the river, including Nanjing in the east and Wuhan in
the west. The Kuomintang was obliged to assemble its main forces to defend the
area and encircled the Dabie Mountain region with 30 bridges numbering 200,000
men. The troops under Liu and Deng were exhausted from continuous marching and
fighting and were unfamiliar with the terrain. Furthermore, since they had only
just arrived in the new area, they had no time to set up local governments and
mobilize the people, so they were short of food, clothing and ammunition. Liu
Bocheng took command of part of the force and broke through the encirclement to
build new base areas along the western reaches of the Huaihe River, while Deng
Xiaoping and Li Xiannian, Deputy Commander of the Central Plains Military
Command, were left to command a crack force whose task was to continue stubborn
resistance in the mountains. Calling on the soldiers to be selfless, Deng said
that there were two loads to be selfless, Deng said that there were two loads to
be carried, and one was heavier than the other. If they in the Dabie Mountains
carried the heavier load, other armies another regions would be able to destroy
large numbers of enemy troops and carry out intensive work among the masses,
which would be greatly to the general advantage. They should therefore hold on
firmly, no matter how weak they became and what hardships they had to endure.
Sharing the hardest conditions with their men, Deng and Li maneuvered in the
mountain gullies day and night, often on empty stomachs. They divided their
forces into smaller units, some to deal with the enemy's local "peace
preservation corps" and others to engage in grassroots political work. If a
large enemy force was approaching, they would concentrate part of their troops
to attack it.Meantime, they mobilized the people to struggle against despotic
feudal landlords and organized local armed forces and militia, thus establishing
a solid base in the Dabie Mountains.

In the end, the repeated "suppression" operations conducted by massive
Kuomintang forces were defeated. Deployed in a triangle in the middle of the
Changjiang, Huaihe, Huanghe and Hanshui rivers three armies-the one led by Liu
and Deng and two field armies newly arrived in the south, one led by Chen Yi and
Su Yu, the other by Chen Geng and Xie Fuzhi-pinned down some 90 of the more than
160 brigades of enemy troops stationed on the southern front. They pushed the
battle line south from the Huanghe to the north bank of the Changjiang and made
the Central Plains, which had served as the rear of the Kuomintang troops in
their offensives on the liberated areas, the base from which the PLA would
advance to nationwide victory. This was a success of great strategic importance.
In May 1984 the Central Committee appointed Deng Xiaoping First Secretary of its
Central Plains Bureau and Political Commissar of the Central Plains Military
Command.

With the launching of the successive Liaoxi-Shenyang, Huai-Hai and
Beiping-Tianjin campaigns, the War of Liberation finally entered decisive stage.

In November 1948 the Huai-Hai Campaigns began. It was to last 65 days.

The battlefield of the Huai-Hai Campaign, centered on Xuzhou, covered a wide
area, from the shores of the Yellow Sea in the east to the borders of Henan and
Anhui provinces in the west, and from the areas along the Longhai Railway in the
north to the Huaihe River in the south. For the Communist-led forces, this
enemy-occupied area constituted a barrier to the Changjiang and to Nanjing, the
capital of the Kuomintang government. After the fall of Jinan, the Kuomintang
government drew back its forces and assembled in the Xuzhou area all the best
troops on the southern front that were operating under its direct control-five
armies and the troops from three pacification zones, totaling 800,000 men.

On the PLA side, seven columns of the Central Plains Field Army (later named
the Second Field Army), 16 columns of the East China Field Army (later named the
Third Field Army) and some local armed forces, or a total of 600,000 men,
participated in this decisive campaign. They were supported by 5.4 million
volunteer laborers, who-using carts, wheelbarrows, shoulder-poles, boats, and
any other means at hand -transported 200,000 tons of grain and 7,000 tons of
ammunition and other military materiel. At this point, it was truly a people's
war. Deng Xiaoping was appointed Secretary of the General Front-line Committee,
which was to command both the Central Plains Field Army and the East China Field
Army and to take charge of everything at the front. The other members of the
Committee were Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi, Su Yu and Tan Zhenlin. Deng and his fellow
commanders made prudent dispositions in accordance with the strategy outlined by
the Central Committee and with the policy decisions of Mao Zedong. Once
operational plans were decided upon, Deng was to help organize their execution
and to share command at the front.

In the Huai-Hai Campaign the Kuomintang had more troops than the PLA and
enjoyed an even greater superiority in arms and equipment. For this reason, the
PLA adopted the basic tactic of repeatedly isolating segments of the enemy's
main force and annihilating them one by one by concentrating a superior force.
At the outset of the campaign the two armies led by He Jifeng and Zhang Kexia,
deputy commanders of the Third Pacification Zone of the Kuomintang army, who
were actually underground Communist Party members, who were actually underground
Communist Party members, suddenly revolted on the battlefront. The main force of
the East China Field Army poured through this opening in the enemy defenses to
block the retreat of the army commanded by Huang Botao, which was moving towards
Xuzhou from east of the Grand Canal, and tightly encircle it the Nianzhuang
area,. After this, the General Front-line Committee, again on its own proposal
with the approval of the Military Commission, moved the Central Plains Field
Army to the rear of the enemy and took by surprise Suxian County along the
Tianjin-Pukou Railway, a place of strategic significance. By so doing they
severed communications between Xuzhou and its rear, isolating the large number
of Kuomintang troops massed around the city and cutting off their retreat. After
wiping out Huang Botao's army, the General Front-line Committee made another
suggestion: next they should eliminate Huang Wei's army of reinforcements, which
had come a long way from southern Henan, was cut off from support and was
suffering from fatigue and shortage of food. The Military Commission promptly
agreed to this plan and gave Liu, Chen and Deng authority of make decisions in
emergency situations without seeking approval from the Commission. Accordingly,
supported by a part of the East China Field Army, the main force of the Central
Plains Field Army besieged Huang Wei's crack units in the Shuangduiji area
between the Huihe and Guohe rivers, and in some 20 days of fierce fighting
annihilated them. Then the East China Field Army pressed on to defeat the three
armies led by Qiu Qingquan, Li Mi and Sun Yuanliang, which had managed to break
out of the siege of Xuzhou and to flee west. Thus the Huai-Hai Campaign ended in
complete victory.

Through 65 days of fighting the PLA had finally triumphed, wiping out 555,000
enemy troops. (Speaking about the campaign later, Mao Zedong once said
facetiously to commanders of the campaign, "The Huai-Hai Campaign was well
fought-it was like a pot of half-cooked rice, but bit by bit you managed to
choke it down.") By this time the Kuomintang's crack troops on the southern
front had been wiped out, the road to Nanjing was open and the collapse of the
reactionary regime was imminent.

In April 1949 the General Front-line Committee, still with Deng serving as
its Secretary and commanding the Second and Third Field Armies, directed the
crossing of the Changjiang. Breaking through the line of defense painstakingly
constructed by the Kuomintang over 500 kilometres from Jiujiang (Jiangxi
Province) in the west to Jiangyin (Jiangsu Province) in the east, the mighty
force,

one million strong, fought its way across the Changjiang and went on to
liberate Nanjing and Shanghai and the vast areas of Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang and
Jiangxi provinces. The liberation of Nanjing signaled the collapse of the
Kuomintang government. On the eve of this vast operation, Deng Xiaoping had
received another appointment: he had been made First Secretary of the East China
Bureau and placed in charge of taking over the east China region,the power base
of the Kuomintang.

When the People's Republic of China was proclaimed on October 1, 1949, Deng
attended the grand inauguration ceremony in Beijing. Soon afterwards he joined
his comrades-in-arms and set out to liberate the Great Southwest of China.

LIBERATING THE GREAT SOUTHWEST

The Great Southwest included Yunnan and Guizhou provinces and present-day
Sichuan and Tibet, with a total area of 2.3 million square kilometres. It was
the last territory held by the Kuomintang before they fled from the mainland. To
liberate the Southwest, the PLA adopted the tactics of outflanking and
encircling the enemy. The Second Field Army, commanded by Liu Bocheng and Deng
Xiaoping, and a corps of the First Field Army, led by He Long, advanced from the
south and the north respectively and swiftly liberated the entire Southwest
except for Tibet, ultimately driving the reactionary Kuomintang forces from the
mainland.

Vast in area and poor in communications, the Southwest had a long border line
and a large population of many nationalities, so that the liberating armies had
to deal with complicated relations among many different peoples. There were
hordes of stragglers and disbanded soldiers in the area, because the Kuomintang
had deployed over 900,000 troops there. Furthermore, the region swarmed with
local bandits and secret agents, and the feudal forces were deep-rooted. The
havoc wreaked by the reactionary forces over the long years had resulted in a
dilapidated society, a ruined economy and a wretched life for the people. Given
the existing conditions, it was a monumental task to build a new life on this
vast, complex, newly liberated land.

Deng Xiaoping served as First Secretary of the Southwest Bureau,
Vice-Chairman of the Southwest Military and Administrative Commission and
Political Commissar of the Southwest Military Command. While leading a campaign
to wipe out fleeing bandits and Kuomintang diehards, Deng, along with Liu
Bocheng, He Long and others, did everything possible to unite with everyone who
could be united with and to win over everyone in the enemy camp who could be won
over. With great care and discretion, they tried to break down traditional
animosities among different peoples and to bring about national unity. Lastly,
by mobilizing the masses, they accomplished agrarian reform and other social
reforms and built democratic governments at different levels. Thus they brought
about stability in the Southwest.

Under their leadership industrial and agricultural production was quickly
restored. One major project they decided to undertake, despite the fact that
there were many other tasks clamoring for attention, was the building of the
Chengdu-Chongqing Railway. On July 1, 1952, when the railway was officially
opened, a dream cherished for decades by the people of Sichuan came true at
last.

At this same time Deng Xiaoping and his comrades were also working hard to
prepare for the liberation of Tibet. In 1951, when Tibet was peacefully
liberated, it was one of their units that planted the five-star red flag on "the
roof of the world".

In less than three years since Deng Xiaoping and the others had come to work
in the Southwest, fundamental changes had taken place. The entire region had
begun to thrive as if spring had returned to the land.

GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE PARTY

In July 1952 the Central Committee of the Party transferred Deng Xiaoping to
the central organs. This transfer marked the beginning of another important
period in his revolutionary career.

He served first as both executive Vice-Premier of the Government
Administration Council (which was to become the State Council in 1954) and
Vice-Chairman of the Financial and Economic Commission, and was soon appointed
Director of the Office of Communications and Minister of Finance as well. In
1954, retaining only the position of Vice-Premier, he became in addition
Secretary-General of the Party Central Committee, Director of the Organization
Department and Vice-Chairman of the National Defense Commission. In 1955, at the
Fifth Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee, he was elected to the
Committee's Political Bureau. In 1956, at the Party's Eighth National Congress,
it was Deng who made the report on the revision of the Party Constitution, and
at the First Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee he was elected
member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau and General Secretary
of the Central Committee. Thus, at the age of 52 he became one of the chief
leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, together with Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi,
Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Chen Yun. For the next ten years Deng Xiaoping was
General Secretary, directing the routine work of the Secretariat. Referring to
this time, he said later, "It was the busiest period in my life."

The decade from September 1956 to May 1966 was a period in which China began
to build socialism in an all-round way. Under the leadership of the Communist
Party, the whole nation worked for socialist economic and cultural development
and scored great achievements. During this time the Party accumulated important
experience and also made some serious mistakes. As General Secretary assisting
the Chairman and Vice-Chairmen of the Party in managing the day-to-day work of
the Central Committee, Deng Xiaoping participated in the policy decisions of the
Party and the state. He put forward valuable proposals on many subjects-
strengthening Party building, consolidating industrial enterprises, improving
their management, introducing the system of workers' conferences and so on.

In his report to the Party's Eighth National Congress in1956, Deng offered a
penetrating discussion on how to strengthen the Party now that it was in power,
explaining that it was confronted by new tests and must constantly guard against
the danger of divorcing itself from reality and from the mass line and practice
democratic centralism and that Party organizations at all levels improve
collective leadership, so as to prevent individuals from acting arbitrarily and
making decisions on important issues alone.

In 1957, after the Party's Eighth Congress had called for concentrated
efforts to develop the productive forces, gratifying results were achieved in
economic work. From this point of view, it was one of the best years since the
founding of the People's Republic. But in 1958, during the Great Leap Forward
and movement to establish people's communes, "Left: errors began to spread.
There followed three years of great hardship. In order to analyze experience and
correct mistakes, Deng Xiaoping and many other leading members of the Central
Committee went on inspection tours and formulated regulations for different
fields of work. Deng also directed investigations in the rural areas and
suggested ways to rectify such mistakes as the institution of compulsory
communal canteens and the system under which the commune was supposed to
distribute necessities to all. He emphasized that in correcting past mistakes it
was essential to abide by the principle of seeking truth from facts. He pointed
out in1962 that the relations of production to be introduced should be of the
type that would be most readily accepted by the masses and most conductive to
the quick restitution and development of production. He also presided over the
drafting of two important documents: the Draft Regulations on the management of
State Industrial Enterprises and the Draft Provisional Regulations for Work in
Institutions of Higher Learning Directly Under the Ministry of Education.

In 1962 the Central Committee convened a central working conference attended
by 7,000 persons, addressing this conference, Deng Xiaoping, in light of the
lessons learned from the previous years, stressed the need to adhere to
democratic centralism and to carry on the Party's fine traditions. He proposed
that all the cases of cadres who might have been wrongly treated in past
political movements should be re-examined and the cadres rehabilitated as
appropriate. On behalf of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, Deng made an
earnest self-criticism in this connection at the conference.

In his tenure of office as the Party's General Secretary, Deng Xiaoping had
extensive contacts with leaders of other Parties in the international communist
movement. On several occasions he headed delegations to Moscow to have talks
with N.Khtyshchov and other Soviet leaders and always took a principled,
independent stand.

THE YEARS OF HARDSHIP AND DANGER

The "cultural revolution", initiated and led by Mao Zedong, took China down
the wrong path. Taking advantage if the situation, a group of careerists and
conspirators headed by Lin Biao and another by Jiang Qing attempted to usurp the
Party and state leadership, bringing unprecedented disaster upon the Party and
the people. During the ten years of turmoil Deng Xiaoping was twice discredited
and removed from office and went through the most painful ordeal in his
revolutionary career.

No sooner had the "cultural revolution" been launched than Liu Shaoqi and
Deng Xiaoping became its chief targets. In August 1966, at the Eleventh Plenary
Session of the Eighth Central Committee, when Mao Zedong issued his famous call
to "bombard the headquarters", Liu and eng were wrongly criticized and
repudiated. Deng was labeled the "No.2 Capitalist Roader in China" and his
family members were implicated. His eldest son Deng Pufang, then a student of
physics at Beijing University, was persecuted with such violence that he
received permanent injuries which left him confined to a wheelchair.

In October 1969, when Lin Biao, in and attempt to seize party and state
leadership, issued his "No.1 order" to prepare against war, Deng Xiaoping was
sent under escort to Xinjian County, Jiangxi Province. Having already been
dismissed from all his posts, he was taken to do manual labor at the county's
tractor repairing plant every morning. He worked as a fitter, as he had learned
to do in France in his youth, and found himself as proficient at the job as
before. Living with him were his wife Zhuo Lin, who was often ill, and his aged
stepmother Xia Bogen, the three of them having only one another to depend on. It
was Deng Xiaoping who, at the age of 65, took care of cleaning the room,
chopping the wood and breaking up the coal. When Deng Pufang became paralyzed
and needed help, after repeated requests by his parents and grandmother he was
sent to live with them; then his father took on the additional responsibility of
nursing him. During this period Deng Xiaoping made the best use of his spare
time, often reading late into the night. He read a great number of
Marxist-Leninist works and many other books both Chinese and foreign, ancient
and modern. The ordeal in Xinjian lasted for three years.

In September 1971 the collapse of Lin Biao's plot for a counter-revolutionary
coup and his death in an air crash eventually led to the rehabilitation of Deng
Xiaoping. In 1972 Mao Zedong began to consider letting Deng resume his work, and
the following year, with the support of Zhou Enlai, he was restored to his post
as Vice-Premier of the State Council. In 1974 he delivered a speech at the Sixth
Special Session of the United nations General Assembly on behalf of the Chinese
government, in which he systematically set forth Mao Zedong's thesis of the
three worlds. In January 1975, when Premier Zhou Enlai became seriously ill and
was hospitalized, Deng Xiaoping was reappointed Vice-Premier and appointed
Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee, Vice-Chairman of the Central Military
Commission and Chief of the General Staff of the PLA, thus replacing Zhou as the
person in charge of all the routine work of the Party and the state.

Jiang Qing had tried to prevent Deng's reinstatement from the outset, but it
was in 1975 that the struggle between Deng and the Gang of Four became acute.
With all his energy Deng set about restoring order to the chaotic situation
caused by the "cultural revolution". "At present," he said. " There are a great
many problems which we cannot solve without indomitable will. We must be
determined and daring." He called for efforts to bring about stability and unity
and to develop the national economy. His conviction that this was that the
country needed reflected the interests and aspirations of the whole nation, and
to the people's great satisfaction, noticeable results were achieved within a
short period of time. Nevertheless, while Mao Zedong supported Deng Xiaoping in
his administration of the day-to-day work of the central organs, he could not
tolerate Deng's systematic correction of the mistakes arising from the "cultural
revolution". He therefore launched a movement to criticized Deng and to counter
the "Right deviation of reversing correct verdicts", which plunged the country
into turmoil again. Taking advantage of this situation, the Gang of Four stepped
in and framed Deng Xiaoping. They accused him of having been the behind-the
-scenes instigator of the Tiananmen Incident of April 5, 1976, in which the
people had poured out their love for the late Premier Zhou Enlai and their
hatred for the Gang of Four, Deng was thus once again dismissed from all his
posts inside and outside the Party, and once again dark clouds hung over the
entire nation.

USHERING IN A NEW STAGE

Nineteen seventy-six is a year the Chinese people will never forget. Zhou
Enlai, Zhu De and Mao Zedong died one after another, plunging the nation into
mourning. Then in October, to general rejoicing, the Central Committee smashed
the counter-revolutionary clique of the Gang of Four. The ten-year "cultural
revolution" that had wreaked such have was finally brought to an end, and the
country entered a new period of its history.

The situation, however, was dismaying. Hundreds of problems were crying for
solution, the "Left' thinking which had completely dominated the country for so
many years was now deeply rooted and the economy was on the brink of collapse.
What road should China take from now? This was the question troubling millions
upon millions of people.

The new period and the new tasks called for the emergence of a new leader.
Since Deng had made valuable contributions during the long revolutionary years,
had waged a resolute struggle against the Gang of Four and had already achieved
notable success in his efforts to restore order, he had earned enormous prestige
in the Party and among the people. With the strong backing of Ye Jianying and
other veterans and in accordance with the People's wishes, in July 1977, at the
Third Plenary Session of the Tenth Central Committee, Deng was reinstated as
Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee, Vice-Premier of the State Council,
Vice-Chairman of the Military Commission and Chief of the General Staff of the
People's Liberation Army. In march 1978 he was elected Chairman of the Fifth
national Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

The ten years of turmoil had made more and more people realize that it was
high time to repudiate "Left" thinking and to set things to rights. Deng lived
up to the people's expectations and displayed his far-sightedness as a
strategist. Faced with a multitude of problems in every area, he soon came to
understand that the key to them all was correct ideology. He explicitly
understood as an integral whole. he emphasized that its essence was seeking
truth from facts, and accordingly he strongly opposed the "two whatevers" (the
view that whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao had made and whatever
instructions he had given must be followed unswervingly). He encouraged
discussion on the criterion of truth, with the result that the rigid bonds that
had constricted people's thinking for so long were broken. People both inside
and outside the Party began to seriously examine the current situation and to
tackle the problems they discovered. This great movement to emancipate people's
minds led to the convocation of the Third Plenary Session of the Party's
Eleventh Central Committee.

This Session, convened in December 1978, marked a fundamental turning point
in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. At a working conference of the
Central Committee held before the Session, Deng delivered a speech which turned
out to be the keynote of the Third Plenary. In this speech he explained in
detail that people should emancipate their minds and seek truth from facts. Just
as the Chinese people had followed this principle in the past in making
revolution, so now, he said, they must rely on it in construction. In accordance
with this principle, the Plenary Session discarded the notion that in a
socialist society class struggle remained the "key link" and made the strategic
decision to shift the focus of the Party's work to socialist modernization, so
as to concentrate on development of the productive forces. Deng stressed that
the Chinese people should be dedicated and steadfast in pursuit of socialist
modernization and not let themselves be hindered by interference from any
quarter. This was a fundamental rectification of the political line, and it
ushered in a new era of reform and opening to the outside world.

In March 1979 Deng made it clear that to maintain the correct orientation in
the modernization drive it was essential to adhere to the Four Cardinal
Principles: keeping to the socialist road and upholding the dictatorship of the
proletariat (the people's democratic dictatorship), leadership by the Communist
Party and Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.

Deng insisted that to ensure the implementation of the ideological and
political lines, a correct organizational line must be established. He was
particularly concerned about ensuring the selection of successors to ageing
cadres. At his urging, a series of measures were adopted to build yp a
contingent of their generation. These cadres would replace some of their older
comrades and work in cooperation with those who would remain. In this way the
system of life tenure for leading cadres would gradually be abolished, and the
age structure within the ranks o fleading cadres would become more and more
appropriate.

These efforts to rationalize the ideological, political and organizational
lines set China back on the path of normal development. This was the
prerequisite for carrying out socialist modernization and the policies of reform
and opening to the outside would.

In order to set things to rights and overcome "Left" mistakes it was
necessary to clear up the confusion in people's minds about how to evaluate the
historical role of Mao Zedong. For this reason the Sixth Plenary Session of the
Eleventh Central Committee adopted a resolution on the subject, entitled
"Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding
of the People's Republic of China". It was Deng who presided over the drafting
of this landmark document. While completely condemning the "cultural revolution"
and the wrong guidelines on which it was based, the resolution made a
comprehensive evaluation of Mao's historical role, affirming that his
contributions were primary and his mistakes secondary. It distinguished between
Mao Zedong Thought--the crystallization of collective wisdom and the product of
scientific theory confirmed by practice-and the mistakes Mao made in his later
years, emphasizing the need to uphold and develop the former. This resolution
helped greatly to unify the thinking of the whole Party and to ensure political
unity and stability throughout the country.

In September 1982, following the initial successes in socialist modernization
and in implementation of reform and the open policy, the Party held its Twelfth
National Congress. At that Congress Deng summed up China's recent historical
experience and drew a basic conclusion: the universal truth of Marxism must be
integrated with the concrete realities of China, and China must blaze a trail of
its own, building socialism with Chinese characteristics.

To do that it is essential to correctly understand China's historical stage.
On this question the Communist Party has recently made a systematic, theoretical
statement: China is now at the primary stage of socialism. Throughout this stage
the basic line of the Party in building socialism with Chinese characteristics
is as follows: to lead the people of all our nationalities in a united,
self-reliant, intensive and pioneering effort to turn China into a prosperous,
strong, democratic, culturally advanced and modern socialist country by making
economic development the central task while adhering to the Four Cardinal
Principles and persevering in reform and the open policy.

Deng said later, "Premier Zhao Ziyang has recently made a correct summation
of our guidelines and policies. Socialist modernization is our basic line. To
carry it out and make China prosperous we must, first, carry out the policies of
reform and opening to the outside world, and we must, second, adhere to the Four
Cardinal Principles, the most important of which are to uphold leadership by the
party and to keep to the socialist road, opposing bourgeois liberalization and a
turn to capitalism. These two points are interrelated."

Just as Deng Xiaoping was the first to articulate the Four Cardinal
Principles, he was the first to propose and insist that China undertake reform,
adopt an open policy and invigorate the economy. Ever since the Third Plenary
Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, he has been actively promoting the
reform. Because 80 per cent of China's population lives in the countryside, it
was there that the reform was to begin. It was tried first in the provinces of
Sichuan and Anhui, and on the basis of the successful experience in those two
places, it was soon introduced throughout the country. The result was that when
the initiative of 800 million peasants was aroused, the productive forces
expanded greatly, a large number of enterprises run by villages and townships
emerged and the peasants' standard of living rose. Three years later, these
notable results having been achieved in the countryside, reform was begun in the
cities. Because urban reform was more complicated than rural reform, Deng urged
that possibility should be explored boldly but with great care and prudence. On
his proposal, four special economic zones were established and 14 coastal cities
were opened to the outside world. After making inspection tours of the zones, he
affirmed the correctness of the policy. On the basis of equality and mutual
benefit, he declared, China should vigorously expand its economic co-operation
with foreign countries, absorb their capital and introduce their advanced
technologies and managerial skills, so as to accelerate the development of its
own economy. The private sector, he said, should be developed properly as a
supplement to the socialist sector, which would remain dominant in China's
economy. He also urged that some regions and some people be allowed to become
prosperous first, through hard work, so that others would follow their example.
If all these policies were applied, he believed, the whole economy would make
rapid progress, eventually enabling all the Chinese people to prosper. Recently,
on more than one occasion Deng has stressed the need to forge confidently ahead
with the reform and the open policy and to move even faster in reform.

Deng has defined the ambitious goals of China's socialist construction as
follows: first, to quadruple the 1980 gross national product by the end of this
century, so that the people will enjoy a comparatively comfortable standard of
living; and second, on the basis of that achievement, to again quadruple GNP
over the following 30 to 50 years, so that China will reach the level of the
moderately developed countries. When China has realized these goals, it will
have pointed the way for all the people of the Third World, who represent
Three-quarters of the world's population. More important, it will have
demonstrated to mankind that socialism is the only solution and that it is
superior to capitalism.

Deng has proposed that to adapt the political structure to the requirements
of economic reform, it too will have to be reformed. As early as August 1980, at
an enlarged meeting of the political Bureau, he made an important speech on the
reform of the system of Party and state leadership, which was later issued as a
document setting forth guidelines for the reform of the political structure. He
stressed the need to expand socialist democracy and strengthen the socialist
legal system. Since 1986 Deng has again pointed out the importance of political
reform, whose objectives he has defined as follows: to revitalize the whole
state apparatus, to increase efficiency and to stimulate the initiative of the
people and of the grass-roots units. The Thirteenth National Congress, convened
in October 1987, declared that it was high time to put reform of the political
structure on the agenda for the whole Party. This reform would involve
separating the functions of the Party and the government, delegating powers to
lower levels, reforming government organs and the personnel system relating to
cadres, establishing a system of consultation and dialogue, improving a number
of systems relating to socialist democracy and strengthening the socialist legal
system. Political restructuring, the Congress stated, was a difficult and
complex task, so it was necessary to adopt resolute yet cautious policies and to
implement them in a guided and orderly way, in order to advance the reform as
steadily as possible.

Deng stated early on that it was imperative to build a socialist society that
was advanced culturally and ideologically as well as materially, so that the
people would cherish lofty ideals and moral integrity, become better educated
and observe discipline. He said that material advance would be hindered or go
astray without cultural and ideological progress. He has attached great
importance to the building of the Communist Party as a party in power, holding
that rectification of Party conduct is the key to rectification of general
social conduct. He therefore deemed it necessary to consolidate the Party in
order to unify thinking, improve style of work, maintain strict discipline and
perfect Party organization-all for the purpose of making the Party a staunch
central force leading the people in their effort to build a materially,
culturally and ideologically advanced socialist society.

Standing in the forefront of the times, Deng Xiaoping is the the man who is
leading China's reform. Following the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh
Central Committee, he became Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee, member of
the Standing Committee of its Political Bureau, Chairman of the Central Military
Commission and chairman of the Central Advisory Commission. He has played a
major role in important policy decisions by pointing out the correct orientation
with regard to key questions that have arisen in the course of formulating the
line since that Session. People regard him as the chief architect of China's
reform. The reform is designed to improve the socialist system, bring its
superiority into full play and push forward the drive for modernization. At this
primary stage of socialism, to accelerate and deepen the reform is the main task
on which all political, economic and social activities must be focused.

The reform and socialist modernization will inevitably encounter interference
both from the "Left" and from the Right. For a time at the end of 1986, a trend
towards bourgeois liberalization was widespread, and certain individuals tried
to stir up unrest by calling for total westernization of China. They pretended
to support the reform and the open policy, but in reality they were trying to
lead China towards capitalism. Deng acted promptly and decisively to dispose of
this matter, and the situation soon returned to normal. He pointed out that if
China went capitalist, the society would be utterly impossible for it to
modernize. Likewise, without political stability and unity it would be
impossible for the country to engage in construction and to implement the reform
and the open policy. He called upon leaders at every level to take a clear-cut
stand in support of the Four Cardinal Principles and in opposition to bourgeois
liberalization.

Having analyzed the lessons of the past, Deng holds that the struggle against
erroneous trends must proceed from reality (in other words, when there are
"Left" trends one fights "Left" trends and when there are Right trends one
fights Right trends). But rigid "Left" thinking has been the more common mistake
in the past and is the more dangerous one today, because it has taken deep root
in society and for many people has become habitual. The ingrained habits of
thought tend to reassert themselves unconsciously whenever these people
formulate and carry out specific policies. Deng believes that to deepen the
reform it is essential to overcome the influence of rigid thinking and that the
struggle against it and against bourgeois liberalization will be a long one,
lasting throughout the course of socialist modernization.

In order to resolve the questions of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao and to
reunify China, Deng formulated the concept of "one country, two systems". The
concept is an important part of building socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Since 1984 the Hong Kong and Macao questions have been solved on this basis.
Deng believes that the same approach can be used to resolve the Taiwan question
and perhaps other similar international issues as well. The concept of "one
country, two systems" has had considerable impact both in China and abroad. This
is one example of Deng's application of the principle of seeking truth from
facts to the solution of complicated practical problems.

Deng Xiaoping is a man of broad vision who thinks in terms of world issues
and has devoted much energy over the years to foreign relations. He has visited
many foreign countries and met with many foreign guests, always with a view to
securing a peaceful international environment for China's socialist
modernization. He was personally responsible for formulating China's independent
foreign police, which in essence consists of standing firmly on the side of the
people of the Third World countries, opposing hegeminism and trying to preserve
world peace. Deng holds that peace and development are the two overriding issues
in the world today. He believes that the danger of war still exists but that the
forces that can deter war are growing. China, he is convinced, can make an
important contribution both to world peace and to steady economic development.

His writings, Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (1975-1982), Fundamental Issues
in Present-day China (1982-1987) - the updated edition of Build Socialism with
Chinese Characteristics (1982-1984) - and Comrade Deng Xiaoping's Important
Speeches (February-July 1987), are widely read both at home and abroad. A
revolutionary with more than sixty years' experience, Deng continues to stay at
the helm and to give generously of his time and energy where major issues of the
Party and the state are involved. At the same time he makes sure that younger
comrades shoulder more responsibilities whenever possible and that he himself in
concerned only with those things that require his personal attention. Although
he is more than 80 years old, Chinese and foreign visitors are always impressed
by his vigorous health and agile mind. Every summer he goes to beaches along the
Bohai Gulf or the Yellow Sea to swim and several times a week he plays bridge.
He says that he has done all his traveling abroad but that there is one more
trip he would like to take: to Hong Kong in 1997, when China resumes its
sovereignty over the territory.

Deng Xiaoping had stressed all along that it is of strategic importance to
bring younger people into positions of leadership and that the destiny of the
Party and the state hinges on this question. He has stood firmly for abolishing
permanent tenure in leading posts and has taken the lead in this connection.
When new leading bodies were elected at the Party's Thirteenth National Congress
and the First Plenary Session of the Thirteenth Central Committee, he withdrew
his candidacy for membership in the Central Committee and its Political Bureau,
accepting only reappointment as Chairman of the Central Military Commission.
However, with his high prestige and profound wisdom he will continue to play a
great role in making major policy decisions of the Party and the state.

Through a lifetime of service to the people, Deng Xiaoping has earned the
respect and affection of millions of his compatriots.